Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

Very likely he was gay, not a word in vogue at the time, as far as I remember, and if he wanted to keep his job, avoid scandal and newspaper publicity, he might aim to present himself as a respectably married man. Far more experienced women than Winifred were unable to detect for a long time, sometimes years, that they had married a homosexual. But perhaps it scarcely mattered whether she knew or found out as she was certainly not marrying Eric Dawson in the expectation of passion, an assumption which was borne out by her behaviour that evening when he arrived in time for supper.

I always ate very little at this meal. I had finished tea only two hours before. But when I told Mrs Cosway that she might prefer me to go to my room while they had a guest, she looked very put out.

‘I don't see that at all,’ she said. ‘You won't be in the way. I don't see you as a servant, Kerstin, but more of a companion or au pair.’

The very title and function I had tried to avoid…Spending the evening in my room – which, whatever its shortcomings, was big and airy – with Great Expectations and my diary, would have been a pleasant relief, but I agreed to stay downstairs at any rate for supper. John went to bed without a word. ‘Zombie’ was not a word much used then, but I had come across it and been told that it came from the Caribbean (or, as we then said, West Indian) term for the living dead. It came into my mind as I stood by, watching John arrange on his bedside table the small objects he kept in his dressing-gown pockets during the day, strictly following the requisite pattern. When I held it out to him he refused the sleeping pill with a shake of the head but took it from the little glass dish when his mother offered it. His expression never changed. Waking and asleep, it was as blank as a mummy's or a passport photograph.

I wondered if he had thoughts or if his mind, like his face, was a tabula rasa , without memory or hope or knowledge as an animal's is said to be, knowing only fear and the need for flight. I was to find out, but not then, not yet. Then, watching him as Mrs Cosway gathered up his discarded clothes, hung up his jacket and trousers and put them away, I felt as Ida must have done when she told me about him that first day, and the tears came into my eyes. Mrs Cosway looked at me with incomprehension, giving a little shrug. Walking downstairs behind her, I thought how, the first time she left me in charge of him at bedtime, I would take a chance and give him an aspirin instead of the barbiturate. If he would take it from me. If he would take anything from me.

Evensong ending at seven-thirty, Eric Dawson arrived half an hour later in his Ford Anglia. He had changed into ordinary clothes, including a shirt with an open neck instead of the dog collar. Again a kiss was exchanged between him and Winifred, he putting his lips to her cheek and she briefly laying the side of her face against his. He had brought the ring, explaining that he had been unsure if she would be at Matins since she had attended seven o'clock Communion four hours before. If the rumour were true and Winifred was the wrong sex for him, she was certainly devout enough. Blushing, she held out her left hand, and watched by her mother, her two sisters and me, he put it on to her third finger. The three little diamonds, caught by a bright beam from the setting sun, made a winking rainbow pattern running up and down the wall as Winifred held out her hand for all to admire. Whether her nails had been cleaned or not was hard to say as she had painted them the same bright pink as her mouth.

Everyone congratulated them and I asked when the wedding would be.

‘It can't be soon enough for me,’ said Eric gallantly with a hearty chuckle.

‘That depends on what you mean by soon.’ This was Winifred, her excitement over the ring giving way to her usual rather ill-tempered moroseness. ‘In about a year, I suppose. That would be the absolute soonest I could manage.’

Trollope says that her engagement is the happiest time of a woman's life. It may have been so in his day but things had changed a lot in a hundred years. Most couples who hadn't ‘anticipated’ their marriage, as the phrase still had it, unusual as that must have been, longed with good reason for their wedding day. As for now, the people next door to us in London have been engaged for eleven years, lived together for longer and probably will never marry. Engagement has become more important than ever, a recognized state which is almost a legal one, and a kind of second-class marriage. But it seemed that Winifred fitted most happily into the nineteenth century, with the exception of all that make-up which would have branded her fast if not a ‘bad woman’, and would have been content to have been Eric's companion to functions, enjoying her status as his fiancée.

For supper that night we ate poached eggs on smoked haddock with mashed potatoes and spinach, a heavy dish I had never before encountered. I took no bread with it and ate nothing more. Eric, on the other hand, ate heartily. Men of his age have told me in perfect seriousness that they got married party for love but also to have someone to cook and clean for them and do their laundry. Eric may have belonged in this category, as he probably had a lean time of it rattling around on his own in that huge Rectory, and Winifred after all was well known for her cookery and organizing of meals. He had more social skills than his prospective bride, showing an interest, whether he had it or not, in my life in Sweden, the University of Lund, my parents and siblings and what career I had in mind for myself.

‘Kerstin will get married,’ was Mrs Cosway's comment. She had overheard some of my phone conversation with Mark and was one of those who still, at that time, believed that the man a woman arranges a date with must be acknowledged as her likely future husband. ‘She has someone lined up, if what I hear is true.’

Not being Winifred, I failed to blush. ‘Who knows?’ I said in my best enigmatic tone.

‘Talking of marriage,’ said Eric, ‘when is Zorah coming back?’

What the connection was between Zorah and marriage I never found out. She had certainly been married and was now a widow but why she should have been a symbol or example of matrimony was a mystery, unless he meant she was the only one of the sisters to have had a husband.

‘She seems to have been away a long time,’ he said.

Mrs Cosway took this remark as criticism of her daughter. ‘Just three weeks,’ she said sharply. ‘And why not? It's not as if she were on a holiday. She has a home in London, as you know.’

Ida, anxious to quieten things down, said that in any case Zorah was coming back on Wednesday.

‘We shall be very pleased to see her,’ said Zorah's mother. ‘We have all missed her.’ Why did I feel this was entirely for my benefit, to deceive me? Perhaps because Mrs Cosway's face remained grave when she said it, even sullen, as if her words were in direct opposition to her feelings.

As everyone but me began eating summer pudding, Eric, back in Victorian novel mode, said he had a piece of news for us. His eyes twinkled and I expected something on the lines of a curate offered him by the Church of England if not promotion to an archdeaconry – you can tell I knew my Trollope.

‘We shall have a new neighbour,’ he said. ‘The Studio is let.’

Winifred looked the most interested. Probably she was rehearsing for her future as a supportive and encouraging wife. ‘Do you have a name, Eric?’

‘I do. I had it all from Mrs Cusp.’ He said to me in an aside, ‘The wife of one of our churchwardens, Kerstin.’ Winifred was favoured with an approving smile. ‘He is a Mr Dunhill, an artist of some sort. Mr Felix Dunhill.’

‘Felix is a cat,’ said Mrs Cosway. ‘There was a song, I believe, something ridiculous about Felix who kept on walking.’